There are so many good things, who can count them?

This morning I am sitting with my coffee and feeling very blessed. It's a beautiful, clear morning. I can see the details on the trees across the lake, and the water is still, reflecting the hills and sky.

God has always taken care of us, through storms and bumps and in the sweet, smooth places. Chinua and I have had dark tunnels, but God was with us and beside us and ushered us into wide fields. I feel astounded by the knowledge of this. Like a sudden gust of wind in my face, it overwhelms me today. How He has kept me, kept me.

As we've spent more time in this house, we realize we really love it here. Love it. We have privacy in our rooms, and friendship in the kitchen. The Nepali manager of the house is always friendly and cheerful, and our New Yorker roommates are wonderful. Sweet and fun and easy to be with. We always end up chopping vegetables together in the kitchen. Sometimes we eat together. Sometimes we make our own food, and then we do the pots and pans dance around each other.

But I am prepared for this. I have been prepared, because I have done this before, in many houses, in many places. This is familiar. We are in Nepal, but on familiar ground, sharing a kitchen, doing things in the simplest way we can. I come up at 4:30 so I have plenty of time to cook dinner without getting myself stuck in the kitchen Rush Hour.

We've even had constant power for a couple of days, for Nepali New Year. The government has a schedule going on, and I guess they allotted twenty hours of power a day for New Year. It feels incredible, like something magical. But I've confirmed what I suspected. It is much easier to go without electricity than without water. Here, especially. We use big jugs of purified water rather than an electric filter like we have in Goa. It's not hot and humid here, so we don't need the fans. And we don't have a refrigerator. The hot water is solar powered. (Which has its own issues on a cloudy day, but that's another story.)

As for the fridge thing, it is working out beautifully. We buy enough milk for the day, right across the street. And it's cool enough that vegetables keep for a couple days, and dinner leftovers keep until next day's lunch. It's definitely keeping us simple.

We have a beautiful bakery (called "Hungry Feel Bakery and Juice Style") just four or five doors down, where we can get the most beautiful fresh bread. I've explored and explored and I think I've found a great vegetable place, a bit of a hike away. Chinua has made a lot of friends and is hanging out and playing music every night at a nearby café. And the lake!

But here. Here are some pictures for you. I need to get out with my camera more, trek into surrounding villages, take more photos of the town. I've been really focusing on school with the kids. It's nice to have all the focus time.

This is the view out of our doors on the back steps.

And this is looking in the other direction.

A little bit of candid YaYa motion. This is the room that the kids sleep in. We also use it as a everyone hang out room... school room, etc. We really need a table. I'm hoping to find a low one, so we can sit on the floor around it, and we won't need any chairs.

 

And this is Chinua and my room. We're cozy in a tiny bed that barely fits us. You should see us when Solo comes to squeeze between us in the mornings, usually between 5:30 and 6:00 because of our lovely giant windows that let in SO much light. We've been waking up a lot earlier here. The kids don't have curtains.

And here's a photo that I took on a walk along the lake the other afternoon, after heavy rains.

Truly beautiful.